Monorails
By taking to the skies these trains offer a perfect alternative to terrestrial transport
Our cities are busier than ever before. We squeeze supermarkets, train stations, roads, offices and homes into every available bit of land, but when space starts to get tight on the ground there’s only one solution – we have to start building upwards. From London to New York, it is the tower blocks that carve out the skyline of a city, but it isn’t just skyscrapers that use this tactic to escape the throngs below.
As urbanisation and globalisation have boomed traffic now dominates the ground, so transport designers and engineers have been forced to turned their eyes skywards. The result was the introduction and popularisation of the monorail. These trains, as the name suggests, run on a single rail and are elevated to avoid the congestion of vehicles, pedestrians and buildings in the streets below.
Russian inventor Ivan Elmanov built the first known monorail prototype in Myachkovo village near Moscow in 1820. Its design was basic – a simple overhead track with suspended carriages drawn along by a horse. The following year British engineer Henry Robinson Palmer patented Elmanov’s design. He built a larger, more robust version of Elmanov’s prototype called the Cheshunt Railway. Originally intended to carry bricks, it made history on 25 June 1825 when it transported passengers as part of the celebration of its grand opening.
Early on in their history, monorails experienced limited success. At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, a working demonstration of a steam-powered monorail was unveiled. It was hoped that the concept could be used to improve transport to and from the oil town of Bradford, Pennsylvania, but an engine accident during trials killed several people and the project was abandoned.
In the 1890s, the Boynton Bicycle Railroad in Long Island, New York, ran locomotives on a single rail – with their wheels aligned like bicycles’ – with a guide rail above. It was also used to test an electric propulsion system, with the upper rail providing power. This system was reportedly capable of speeds of 120-160 kilometres per hour, but the project ground to a halt when the company behind it went bust.
“When space starts to get tight on the ground there’s only one solution – we have to start building upwards”
The world’s longest-running monorail is the ‘Schwebebahn’ Wuppertal Suspension Railway in Germany, which has been in operation since 1901. This suspension monorail is now a popular mode of transport for both locals and tourists, ferrying around 85,000 passengers each day.
It was not until the 1950s that the monorail started to gain momentum as a novel mode of transport. An experimental monorail system developed by Swedish entrepreneur Axel Lennart Wenner-gren in 1952 caught the attention of none other than Walt Disney. The famous American animator was inspired by Wenner-gren’s ‘ALWEG’ design and asked engineers at Disney to build a similar system for his futuristic Tomorrowland at Disneyland, California. The Disneyland Monorail opened in 1959 and captured the public’s imagination.
The ALWEG system became increasingly popular. The boom in population and urbanisation since the 1980s has seen monorails being introduced in countries all over the world, including the US, Germany, Japan and India. Today, their stylish, sleek design fits well with
the current background of a contemporary city. However, they don’t just look futuristic. Many monorails employ state-of-the-art technology that allows them to hover over the track known as magnetic levitation, or maglev. Powerful magnets in the base of the train interact with metallic loops in the guideway (the ‘track’) to induce an electric current and therefore generate another magnetic field. The loops are arranged so that the magnetic fields produced in the guideway both levitate the train and drive it forward. Without friction between the train and the guideway, it is easier for maglevs to reach and sustain higher speeds.
There are two main monorail systems: straddle type and suspended type. Straddle type monorails – like the ALWEG system – travel above the rail and are the most widely used today. The less common suspended types hang underneath the track using a series of pneumatic tyres to clamp either side of an I-shaped beam. In both suspended and straddle type, most monorails are powered by an electric current conducted from the beam to the engine.
Despite their benefits, modern monorails haven’t been without their setbacks. It is difficult to integrate monorails with established transport networks because they are unable to connect directly to conventional railways. This means passengers need to use connecting transport to access them, which can make travel inconvenient. Another logistical hurdle is that their large concrete support pillars require a lot of suitable land to dig down into. Even so, despite these challenges sky-faring monorails are changing the face of transportation in cities around the world, particularly in Japan, where they exist as full-scale urban transit systems.
Part of the monorail’s popularity is down to its inherent safety. The elevated design means that monorails are widely recognised as the safest
“The stylish and sleek design of a monorail fits well with the current background of a contemporary city”
form of transport because there is no interaction with traffic or pedestrians, collisions are rare and derailments even more so. Additionally, they don’t directly contribute to air and noise pollution as they are usually run on electric and make far less noise than traditional trains.
Monorails could be one solution to the growing problem of traffic and congestion on our streets. In addition to conventional monorail trains, some companies have proposed monorail pod-like systems to ferry passengers around cities. Companies like Skytran in Israel and Skyway in the British Virgin Islands are developing prototypes of such systems, which could someday revolutionise personal transport. It seems there will always be a place in the sky for the monorail.